


make it reality

by Maven_Fair



Series: in a state of dreaming [2]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Dream Smp, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, One Shot, Prequel, Single Father Wilbur Soot, Video Game Mechanics, not beta read we die like schlatt, not to any of the tagged characters dw, tragic backstories whooooo, very slightly at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27694997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maven_Fair/pseuds/Maven_Fair
Summary: When Tubbo first meets Tommy, he’s in his box. | Sapnap knows that being a bounty hunter makes him a bad person. | It’s a horrible day when Wilbur meets his son, Fundy. | It’s a full year after the masked man last came by when Bad finally sees him againThings are coming together.
Relationships: BadBoyHalo & Clay | Dream, Clay | Dream & Darryl Noveschosch, Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Floris | Fundy & Wilbur Soot, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Series: in a state of dreaming [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023670
Comments: 8
Kudos: 107





	make it reality

When Tubbo first meets Tommy, he’s in his box. 

It’s hard to explain to others what his box is. They figure Tommy is joking when he says that he met Tubbo in a box. Except it’s not a joke. For as long as he can remember (which, in reality, really isn’t a lot), that box was his whole world. People came and went, the scenery changed, but his box always stayed the same. 

There are very few things that Tubbo can remember before meeting Tommy. He remembers being cold, hungry, tired… He remembers people passing by without a care, as though they couldn’t see him. No matter how cold, though, he never got sick. No matter how hungry he never starved and no matter how tired he never fell asleep. 

_I will protect you,_ the box told him. _Stay with me._

That voice was Tubbo’s only companion for as long as he can remember. When he was younger, he used to try and talk to the voice. The voice would never answer. Soon enough, he learned to simply listen when it talked. Tubbo got to be a very good listener.

It’s something that comes in handy when he meets Tommy Innit. The boisterous teenager seemed to never run out of words to say. It was a far cry from the stilted conversations that Tubbo had with his box - for one, he was actually expected to answer back - but he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

His box turned quiet once Tommy arrived. Or, according to Tommy, once Tubbo arrived. From his perspective, Tubbo and his box simply appeared on the side of the road. Tubbo told Tommy that maybe he had eaten too many wild berries, since Tubbo could very well see Tommy walking on the path towards him (which was strange, he could never see anyone before that, they always just sort of appeared, like how Tubbo supposedly did).

Tubbo still carries his box with him. Tommy doesn’t understand why he’s so attached to it, why the box never leaves his side, and Tubbo couldn’t really explain it to him. Tommy didn’t understand how it felt to be truly alone aside from one other person. No, not even a person, a _thing._

At night, when they could hear monsters prowling around their campsite, Tommy would tell him about his family, Sleepy Bois Inc. How weird, Tubbo thought. He couldn’t even imagine what a family was. Tommy had asked him if his box was his family, but Tubbo couldn’t imagine fighting over a piece of bread or arguing about which room he got with the box. Neither could he imagine the box comforting him after a nightmare or making breakfast for him. 

(On another note, Tubbo couldn’t imagine a house as big as Tommy’s was. _Five_ bedrooms? Where were their boxes? According to Tommy they didn’t have boxes, but beds and desks and even a kitchen and living room. It took a while for Tubbo to understand the concept of those last two.)

Leaving the box wasn’t difficult. In fact, it was almost too easy. He took the box with him, of course, but when traveling with Tommy he never found himself falling asleep in his box, but in the tent with Tommy, who would regale him with tales of his heroic exploits. 

It’s been a full two years that they’ve traveled together. Tubbo learned how to fight through rushed lessons with Tommy, but he could never find the thirst for it that the other boy did. He was more enamored with the people and things they met along the way - a kind baker passing by, a traveling magician, a sketchy salesman that Tommy had to drag him away from. It was four months into their travels that Tubbo felt a pull towards a section of land.

Tommy was hesitant to follow his lead at first (and Tubbo couldn’t blame him, he’d only ever known a box before meeting him, after all) but went along nonetheless. “You need to learn how to make your own decision, Tubbo,” he had said. “I’ll be there when you need me to pick up the pieces. Really, you’d be falling apart without me.” Tommy said it as a joke, but Tubbo could see the worry behind the humor. 

“Right you are,” Tubbo replied. He let the pull guide him and Tommy towards whatever destination was awaiting them. 

(A masked man begins to smile.)

* * *

Sapnap knows that being a bounty hunter makes him a bad person. Unlike George, who still tried to reconcile with the reality of what they’re doing, Sapnap has already accepted it. If heaven and hell existed, people like them burned down under. It doesn’t matter why they did what they were doing. All that mattered was that they’ve most definitely delivered innocent people to corrupt nobility. 

But at least the pay kept them alive.

And that’s all Sapnap could really ask for. Because at the end of the day, he’d choose his and George’s lives over anybody else’s. George may hesitate - he _has_ hesitated - but Sapnap doesn’t hold it against him. He was always the better out of the two of them, really. 

Searching for this man, Clay, could get them out of this life. George could finally stop worrying about bringing in innocents, and Sapnap could use the money to ignore his own guilt. They say money can’t buy everything, but he doesn’t need it to buy everything. Just safety. Just enough to buy their freedom from a life of constant running.

George and Sapnap stay together, no matter what. That’s how it’s been since George’s parents died and Sapnap’s abandoned him. The villagers didn’t care about two orphan kids. The villagers never cared when the debtors came, when he and George became homeless, when they had to learn how to pickpocket in order to survive, or when he and Sapnap almost got sold away to pillagers. 

Finding their next mark proves to be hard. Along the way they manage to round up a few low-level jobs to keep them afloat, with only the promise of that 100,000 gold reward keeping them going. But Clay is very obviously a smart man. There were close to no trails on him, and of the trails that there were, most other bounty hunters got to first. Because while George and Sapnap desperately wanted that money, so did every other bounty hunter they came across.

It took a full year before George and Sapnap even came across any type of solid trail. It was when they were camping outside of a village when the person approached them. “You’re… bounty hunters, right?” the man had asked.

“Yeah?” Sapnap asked. George elbowed him for his tone, but being chased out of a village right before nightfall doesn’t really make someone interested in being amiable to strangers. 

“Sorry about him,” George says. The man laughs, waving him off. Sapnap can feel George relax slightly, but neither of them offer the man a seat. He takes one anyway. 

“It’s fine,” the masked man says. Now that he’s closer to the fire, George and Sapnap can make out what’s on his mask. A childish smiley face, carved out and filled in with some kind of hardened black substance. “I saw what happened back there. Though I might help you out.”

Sapnap glares suspiciously at him. “Yeah? What’s your creepy ass gonna help us with?” George kicks him in his shin, but doesn’t immediately apologize for him. He’s obviously just as wary of the man’s words.

After all, while people occasionally wore masks to avoid making eye contact with endermen at night, none of the ones they’ve come across looked quite as alarming. Nevermind the fact that there were no visible eyeholes. Some kind of high level enchantment, probably. The man was rich, that much was sure. 

“You’re looking for Clay, right?” he asks, and both George and Sapnap’s back go rigid. The lazy facade they’ve been faking immediately falls. 

“Yeah,” George says. “You know anything?”

“I heard a rumor about a man that looked like him at the last village I was at,” the man says. The light from the first illuminates the man’s face from the down up, making the dot eyes seem shadowed. “Saw the wreckage that he caused. Looked like the type of crimes that were listed by the nobleman who called for his head.”

“There were no crimes listed on the wanted poster,” George points out. Sapnap nods. 

“You’re right,” the man says. “But I was there when he first committed them.” Sapnap scoffs, wrapping his hand around the hilt of his sword. 

“Sure, and so was everyone else in this goddamn server.”

“I found this,” the man says, pulling out a small coin. He lays it down on the ground between the three of them, and George and Sapnap lean in to check it out. The coin is intricate, pure gold, gleaming in the fire light. Nobody could mistake the design.

“A Hypixel Royal coin?” George says. “You’re kidding. This. This is worth _gold coins.”_

“He stole from _Hypixel?”_ Sapnap asks. 

“Not just Hypixel,” the man says, “He stole from a bunch of big servers.”

“Jesus,” Sapnap says. “Jesus Christ. Hypixel.”

“Is that why you’re helping us out?” George asks. “Did he steal from you, or something?”

“Something,” the man says. He pulls out another thing from his pockets, a piece of paper, and gives them to Sapnap. “The coordinates to the last place I heard he was at.”

“Why should we trust you?” Sapnap asks. If there’s one thing he’s learned about being a bounty hunter, it’s that trust should never be given, only benefit of the doubt. “How do we not know that _you’re_ Clay? How’d you even get this coin, anyway?”

The man pauses. The fire next to them crackles, sending another burst of embers towards them. A speck lands on the mask. It disappears the next second. “Trust me,” the man says. “I want him caught just as much as you do.” And there’s something in the way that he says it that makes him and George look at each other, minds both set.

“Fine,” Sapnap says. “What do you want in exchange for this?” Because no trail ever came free. Just two months ago they got scammed by a woman who seemed just as sincere as the man in front of them did. _Revenge for her wife,_ she said. Only to take fifty silver coins and never come back.

“Nothing. Just catch him, yeah?”

“Thank you,” George says. Sapnap nods at him. The man waves the thanks off, picks himself off of the ground, and walks away towards the village. 

“When you get to those coordinates, tell him Dream sent you.” 

So George and Sapnap make their way towards the man’s coordinates. The man, Dream, left them with the Hypixel Royal coin, and they sold it off for 10 gold coins. It’s enough to repair their iron armor and restock their potions and food supply, with quite a bit left over for the future. They end up having to cross through a full desert, only barely surviving the hot days and freezing cold nights. But something in them tells them that they’re on the right path. That whatever’s at the end will lead them to Clay. Lead them to their freedom.

When they do get there, though, all they find is a block headed man. 

“What the fuck,” Sapnap says, looking down at the light blue man. George stays silent, hand on his sword. The mystery man is tied up with a fishing rod of all things, a bag of gold coins beside him and a paper with coordinates stuck to the tree he’s leaning up against.

“Hello,” the man says, too calmly. “Do you guys happen to know where BadBoyHalo is?”

* * *

It’s a horrible day when Wilbur meets his son, Fundy. The sky is murky with the warning of an incoming storm, the air is full of dust, and the temperature is muggy. Wilbur had just finished with a three week long journey from the last village he found, and his clothes were dirty with sweat and dirt. He hadn’t truly had time to wash himself in twelve days. And to top it all of, he was being told that he had a child. 

Falling in love with Sally the Salmon was a reckless moment of passion, and now here he was, a single father to a fox hybrid. Was this how Philza first felt, when he first picked up a weird strawberry haired child off the road? Except he wilfully picked up Technoblade, for reasons that still escaped Wilbur.

It’s not hard to admit that him and Sally weren’t the best couple. They were both too headstrong, too stuck in the clouds to truly understand each other. They originally came together under the common feeling of not belonging. Their inspirations were too high and everyone else too apathetic around them. Their time together was sweet but short, tainted by the strained last few days as they both knew they would inevitably go their separate ways. He doesn’t regret it, no - could never regret it - but he surely wonders what would’ve happened if they hadn’t met.

But he’s here now, with a two-year-old fox child who was dropped off by his mother. Hybrids aged faster to adulthood than humans, but their aging evened out once they hit around twenty human years in age. It had only been four months since Fundy was born, but he already looked around the age of a two-year-old. 

God. What was he supposed to do with a two-year-old?

Wilbur contemplated calling his father more than once. If the man could manage to raise three vastly different, surely he could help Wilbur out with his dilemma, right? But each time he reached to call him something stopped him. _It’s not time,_ it seemed to say. _Not yet._

So he doesn’t call him. He brings Fundy along with him on his travels, settling him into their room at the inn before playing in the local bars. Before getting Fundy he would’ve just performed for board and food, but now with Fundy he has to buy so many more things. He needed to get children’s armor (which constantly needed adjustments), child-friendly foods (no more subsisting off of stale bread for two weeks), educational books (no son of Wilbur’s would be uneducated), blankets (he might’ve been okay with sleeping in his jacket, but Fundy didn’t need to go through that), and so, so much more. 

Fundy grows so fast, as well. Philza always said that it felt like the years with them flew by, and Wilbur finally understood what he meant. (Although Fundy was a hybrid that grew six times the speed of a normal human.) 

He’s barely holding himself together when he gets a message from Tommy. It’s been a whole three years since he’s seen his family. Fundy was twelve-years-old. The urge to go off his path to find them never truly leaves, but most days he simply ignores it. They loved each other, but none of them had the same goals in life. All of them knew it, but those childhood days would forever be close to Wilbur’s heart. So seeing a message from Tommy meant something was either very, very bad or very, very good.

_TommyInnit hyper whispers to you: Wilbur! I found this friend, Tubbo, a few months back, and he said he had this urge to go to this newly bought land._

_TommyInnit hyper whispers to you: I noticed we’re really nearby so idk if you wanna maybe meet up?_

_TommyInnit hyper whispers to you: We just haven’t seen each other in so long. I think you’ll really love Tubbo, too._

For a moment, Wilbur is jealous of the idea that Tommy had enough money to send three cross-server hyper whispers to him. But then he registers the messages, and a grin spreads across his face.

“Who're you talking to, Dad?” Fundy asks him, tugging on the arm of his brown coat. He’s up to Wilbur’s chest, now, with gangly arms and legs. 

“Your uncle, Tommy.”

“The one I should bully if I see him?” Wilbur laughs at the offhanded joke he made a few months ago that stuck in his son’s head. 

“That one, yeah. He invited us to meet up with him, and it’s nearby, so I figured we might as well go.”

“Sounds good, Dad.” 

_You hyper whisper to TommyInnit: send the coords. I have someone I want you to meet, too._

* * *

It’s a full year after the masked man last came by when Bad finally sees him again. The man doesn’t look even as close to as horrible as he did in Bad’s two am nightmares, and Bad finds himself slightly bitter over it before he quickly gets over it to bring the man into a hug. His friend brings with him a sack of gold coins (as he always does) and a piece of paper with some coordinates.

“By the way,” his friend said, “My name is Dream.” And then he’s gone, like his namesake.

Bad doesn’t know where the coordinates lead. He was too shocked by the arrival of Dream that he failed to even try to reject the money. But something in him told him that following the coordinates would be a good idea. 

Packing up his belongings took far longer than it should have. Bad hadn’t traveled farther than to the butcher down the street in… goodness knows how long. His and Skeppy’s house had been a safe haven since the two of them came across a cheap plot of land that nobody else seemed interested in buying. He remembers building up their house from scratch, tearing down trees, trading for glass and furnaces, decorating their rooms with the trinkets they came across on their former journeys.

Skeppy and Bad were inseparable, even from childhood. Their parents often bemoaned the exuberant exploits that Skeppy would get up to (and Bad would consequently be pushed into as well). Even when leaving for the road they never strayed. They traveled together, fought together, grew cold and hungry together, worried for their lives together. When they finally came across a town that welcomed them with open arms, they knew they would finally settle down.

Except, deep down, they both knew this _wasn’t_ their final destination. Somewhere in the future they would find another place to settle, another place they would call their home. But for now, they lived together in a small house that they built from scratch.

The itch to leave the house hadn’t come up for six whole years. It came earlier for Skeppy, causing him to pack up a small satchel and go on his way to wherever he was now (“I’ll be back in just a few months, Bad, don’t worry!”), but his own adventurous spirit didn’t seem to even so much as stir. 

Now, though? The coordinates that Dream left him seemed to sing to him, and he knows, even without being told, that Skeppy will be there at the end. So he packs up his belongings, bakes one last batch of muffins for the road, sells the house away to a neighbor, and puts on an old but familiar black and red hood.

* * *

Source: Excerpt from the article “Endermen Powers: Thousand Years of Myths,” by Professor Vince, published in Mineplex News, 3019.

The question of what endermen’s actual powers are has been a constant debate for decades. The most prevalent and accepted hypothesis is that they have the ability to teleport. This was first coined by Jack Baker, the first documented person to encounter an enderman and live. “It was terrifying,” he wrote, “Like a battle that you went into knowing you would lose. The thing was both in front of me and behind me at the same time.” (pg. 49) We also see evidence of this claim in various photographs taken mere seconds in between, where an enderman has traveled far faster than scientifically possible (see Figure 2). Traces of the purple particles they emit, commonly referred to as “end particles,” can be found many blocks away from each other as well (Zhang et al.).

Another common theory is that they contain the ability to show you your worst nightmares. This hypothesis has little to no evidence behind it, but the same could be said about everything we know about endermen. In a research study in 2890 by the professors of endology, James Nistack and Samantha Breive, it was found that thirteen out of the thirty participants claimed that the enderman showed them their greatest nightmares, such as falling or burning to death. Adding onto this theory are photographs of endermen victims with scars that they didn’t have before the encounter. Sandra Triaz, who encountered an enderman at the age of 40, reappeared without an arm after claiming to have seen vision of her being eaten by a shark (Triaz pg. 74).

The third most prevalent theory is that endermen can teleport other people through both space and time. This is the one theory that has absolutely no true data behind it. In a survey conducted in 3010 between 400 victims, only three claimed that they were teleported to a different time or dimension (Inpal et al.). Many people chalk this theory up to madness caused by endermen (yet another common rumor), but the people who responded that they were teleported rated high in mental stability. Of course, this does not immediately validate the theory, but there are signs that their claims hold up. 

In Maria Meyer’s memoir, _A Life Touched by the Ender,_ she clearly documents every single step of her life that supposedly changed, from big moments, like her parents apparently getting divorced in her original memories, to smaller moments, like her fish dying only one day before. In Umar Sallow’s journal, prior to his suicide in 2940, he claims that he traveled thirteen years to the past, even meeting his younger family members. The journal itself is crazed and half illegible, a far cry from Meyer’s collected tone in her book. 

It’s often hard to tell fiction from fact when it comes to endermen. The fact is, we simply don’t know many things about them. Perhaps all of these are true. Perhaps they’re all fake. Perhaps each enderman has a different power. Just remember, readers, curiosity killed the cat. But satisfaction brought it back.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! this series has literally taken over my thanksgiving break lol. i'm trying to pace myself by creating the next part in the series before posting the one i've finished, which has really helped with burnout. i literally cannot wait for the next fic you guys won't believe (spoiler: it's eret and niki yay!!!), but since i have classes it'll probably be around 2 weeks before the next update. also if you see me change up the summary style for the series no you didn't. again, thanks for reading, and i hope you have an amazing day :)


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